Trademarks & Domain Names

The Trade Marks Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 January 2019. Vanessa Harrow examines the key changes being introduced to UK law.

The application for trademark registration of the sign ‘H2O+’ was refused by the EUIPO, as decided by the EU General Court on November 27, 2018. The EU General Court concluded that the sign applied for lacks distinctive character and is therefore not suitable as a trademark.

Domain name management usually sits outside the IP department with marketing and/or IT teams. Those departments may have been schooled in the need to consult the IP team as part of the domain name registration strategy, but what about decisions as to ongoing maintenance, gaps in protection or decisions to lapse registered domains?

Frequently bloated with unused registrations or starved by gaps in coverage, a thorough audit of your trademark assets could help you to identify ways to streamline and exploit your portfolio, saving you money while also improving the efficiency of your assets.

Counterfeit purchases tend to spike before holidays such as Christmas and during designated sales periods, such as Black Friday and the January sales.

As is usually the case with IP, it saves time and money over the longer term if a strategy is in place in advance of a brand takeover or launch. The same is true when two businesses merge.

In the spirit of the holidays, Claire Jones examines Christmas-themed IP issues and sets out requirements to consider in order to avoid them.

Novagraaf’s Timo Buijs examines the function of colours in trademark law and the possibility to register colours and combinations of colours as trademarks, based on a recent CJEU ruling.

Most of us finish the year feeling bogged down by the work we didn’t quite get around to. Fortunately, the new year offers the promise of a fresh start making December the perfect time to set achievable goals. Why not finish the year with an audit of your IP portfolio, so you can plan your maintenance, consolidation and enhancement projects for the months ahead.

It may be desirable or indeed necessary to retain existing ownership structures for brands acquired as part of a merger or acquisition (M&A). However, if the newly merged business has been rebranded, the conflict between the registered legacy brands and the new brand will need to be resolved.

A number of important amendments were introduced to Benelux Trademark Law in 2018 and there are more to come in early 2019. A summary of the recent and expected changes is set out below.

The European Commission and UK negotiators have reached an agreement on the text of the Brexit Draft Withdrawal Agreement, it still needs to get through UK parliament and the rest of the EU.